New!! The Archives have been cleaned up, fead links fixed, and printable versions restored! Also, don't miss the new comments on the front page!

Livin'
With The Sims:
theAntiELVIS explores the wild and wacky world that is Will Wright's The Sims,
asking the inevitable quesiton, "is The Sims the first step toward a virtual
life where everyone is Swedish?"

hen
you first watch the intro piece to Jazz Jackrabbit 2 what you
see might come as a bit of a surprise. The animation looks antiquated,
the music might as well have been piped in from any number of early
eighties videogames, and the storyline appears about as shoot-em-up
as you can get...and it all looks wonderful. Jazz Jackrabbit 2 is
firmly stuck in the past. The animation recalls those stupid little
school films featuring any number of anthropomorphized furniture and
household appliances lecturing about safety. What those films lacked,
of course, was the self-aware sense of humor that Jazz Jackrabbit
uses to its full advantage. The creators are aware of the limitations
of the form they have chosen; one can only imagine that that is why
they styled the game's cinematics so deliberately. One the one hand
this, "old school/cheap" feeling heightens the lack of seriousness with
which the viewer approaches the game and automatically increases the
effectiveness of the overall gag. The last thing Jazz Jackrabbit
2 wants is to be taken seriously; the point is that in this world
absurdity rules.

Even the music draws on the
dusty heritage of an older cartoon period. The opening piece reminds
the viewer of the tunes that accompanied the mock-drama of any number
of action adventure series, yet sounds somewhat sillier than that...like
the Thundercats' theme on helium. The crucial distinction, however,
is that Jazz Jackrabbit 2 is also very savvy in how it incorporates
the more "modern" elements of the contemporary videogame into its cinematics.
Despite the older feel of the opening, there are actually several more
contemporary components to the opening movie. For one thing, the pace
is quite fast. Our hero Jazz slides from one encounter with his turtle
enemies to the next, grinning all the way. When the furious green haired
bunny kills his enemies, he zaps them, eliminating them, "with extreme
prejudice." Perhaps the funniest moment in the intro comes as Jazz draws
his weapon and fires on a turtle. The poor sap hardly has the chance
to react as he disappears in a white flash, only the shellshocked looking
remains of his eyes remaining behind in the terminal afterglow. Another
turtle, faced with certain doom, waves a little white flag of surrender
before disappearing faster than Snagglepuss after a chorus of "exit
stage lefts." Our hero, finally coming up against a rather large and
ferocious turtle, has no other option but to swing out of trouble, grabbing
onto a rope which, after being triggered by way of some convoluted Rube
Goldberg device, hurtles him into the air and out of danger. Just before
he flies away, Jazz smirks at his enemy, that devilish grin which has
become the hallmark of every modern wisecracking goodguy. So Jazz is
not completely the product of his environment.

On the whole Jazz Jackrabbit
2 is a great little piece of retro cinematics. The opening wonderfully
recalls Saturday morning cartoons and as well as those TwilightZone-ish grade school instructional films. The creators revel
in their perversity, transforming rabbits into bloodsoaked hares and
using panicking turtles as cannon fodder. It may not be great cinema
designing, but it's certainly entertaining...and in the world of Jazz
Jackrabbit that's all that really matters.